


The Abandoned Room

by SilverHalos88



Series: Time Limited Love [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Dark, Gen, Heartbreak, Hope, Hopeful Ending, Lost Love, Melancholy, Regret, Sad, Sonic Screwdriver, Spooky, The Vault (Doctor Who), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28989252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverHalos88/pseuds/SilverHalos88
Summary: “It had been a long time since she had been to this place, but recent events have forced her hand. With no other choice, the 13th Doctor returns to The Vault, and finally faces the regrets of what could have been. In doing so, she discovers something that shouldn’t be, something that might hold the potential to finally filling the void that has plagued her since her regeneration.”This is the third part of my ongoing 12th Doctor/Missy story which sees them as an established couple trying to keep their relationship alive in spite of seemingly overwhelming forces trying to stop them. While I do have a general idea now, I am mostly making this up as I go along, so this part is a twist even for me. Who knows where it’s going to go…
Series: Time Limited Love [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2103555
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	The Abandoned Room

The old stone steps down to the near forgotten basement level beneath St Luke’s university seemed almost insulted that someone would actually step on them, breaking the sanctity of silent abandonment that was the only regular occupier of the space. The sound of her footsteps echoed off the wall as she walked, making it feel like she was descending into some foreign world where noise itself was twisted into some strange concept that would have been frightening to most people.  
But the Doctor wasn’t most people, and she hadn’t come this far to turn back now.  
It had been a long time since she had come here, more than she was willing to think about. It just hadn’t seemed right since the cybermen and the colonization ship. She hadn’t even wanted to think about it, trusting that the locks of vault would keep any brave explorer at bay. It had been her hope that the room would be forgotten, built over and lost to time as just another curious oddity. All that had changed over the past few days.   
The Master had returned, and was more dangerous than ever.  
He had managed to infiltrate her life, slipping right under her nose. In doing so he had created all kinds of chaos, putting her new friends at risk, not to mention the entire world as well. It had broken her hearts having to stop him, but he was completely different from the last time she had seen him. Any progress towards changing his ways and redeeming him seemed completely lost. Maybe somewhere deep down, locked behind deep trenches of self-hatred and mountainous walls of blind fury, there was still something of the person he had been becoming. And maybe one day they would be able reach that person once again, but right now one thing was clear: the new Master was nothing like Missy.  
Missy. The name made her hearts ache. Of all the Master’s regenerations, she had been the one closest to how he had been when they were children, when they first became friends. She was so brilliant, full of so much potential to become more than the darkness and the madness that had claimed her past regenerations for so long. She had worked so hard, trying to make herself better. All the decades they had spent down here, all the conversations they had shared. It was the closest the two had been in centuries, in entire regenerations. And now it was all over. The last she had seen of Missy she had been walking away with her previous regeneration, trying to escape before the cybermen attacked, but she had known it was a ruse. She had sensed it, even during all the tension from the coming battle and the heartbreak with Bill, she, as her previous regeneration, had been able to sense the conflict inside of Missy. She had seen that battle, perhaps clearer than Missy had herself in that moment, and knew what the outcome would be.  
Missy had chosen to be with her. In the depths of her subconscious, Missy had chosen to stand with her. She had decided to come back, but never had. The Doctor had never managed to discover what had happened to her, but that loss had hurt more than losing Nardole and Bill, and even Clara. The heartbreak had been made all the worse by the reappearance of the new Master, so much so that it had been all she could do to bury the memories of her oldest friend, lock them away to protect herself from the pain. But the time had come to face those memories again. She’d had no choice. The Master knew about this place, and was smart enough to be able to weaponize the technology of the quantum fold chamber that made the vault. She had to remove it before it fell into his hands.   
At last she reached the end of the stairs and crossed into the antechamber. There before her were the large doors that marked the entrance to the vault, but she didn’t move. Instead, she once again checked the readouts from her sonic screwdriver. Like the stairs, the area was clear. There were no traps, no bombs. By every reading she could take, the area was clear. But that did nothing to ease her nerves. She was glad she was alone. Her new companions were great, but this was personal, far to personal to include them. She had already revealed more than what she was entirely comfortable with. The recent events with the Master had forced her hand in that regard. She had hoped it was enough for them; the more they new about her the greater the danger they would be in – and the greater the danger they would put themselves in. Right now what she needed most was an arm’s length relationship, a bit of distance so no one would get hurt. Especially her.  
Reaching the door, she reached into her coat and grabbed the key. She looked at it for a moment before pushing it into the lock. The sound of the gears and cogs turning filled the space around her, and she couldn’t help but brace for whatever might be on the other side. It was a torturous few seconds before the doors swung open. It had been a long time since they had opened last, and the lights beyond took a second to flicker on.   
Despite her fears, and maybe her hopes, the room beyond was empty. The vault was exactly how they had left it when she, Missy, Bill and Nardole had unknowingly left if for the last time. They were all gone now, but just seeing the room again made a flood of memories come rushing back. It was like the very space itself was haunted, every inch of it thick with moments that she would never see again. She had always kept an open mind about things, but ghosts had always seemed more towards the far-fetched region of things. Seeing the vault empty as it was now, she couldn’t help but doubt that sentiment a little bit more. Making sure the key for the lock was safely back in her pocket, she closed the door and got to work.   
It didn’t take her long to miniaturize the handful of pieces of furniture in the room. They easily fit in the small shoulder bag she had bought along for the occasion, but it was funny. She remembered there being more things down here, more for lack of a better term, rooms. With the furniture dealt with, she turned her attention to the central containment chamber. That was the most secure area of the room, a vault within a vault practically, and was where Missy would wait when she would enter and exit the room. Even now it still held the stack of books that she had been reading, and her piano. How she ached to her the varied tones her friend would play, bouncing from classic epics to modern jingles with an ease that would make any pianist jealous. Using her screwdriver, she opened the door to the containment chamber and went inside. It was a surreal feeling. It should have felt constraining, claustrophobic, like stepping into a prison. Yet she felt protected here, like it was her own little world where nothing else mattered. Was this how Missy felt here? The question hurt to think it. How she wished Missy was here right now. There were so many things she would ask her.   
After dealing with the books and the piano, she stepped outside, held up her screwdriver, and then activated the deactivation sequence for the vault.   
The effect was instant. The deconstruction matrix flickered through the entire structure, rippling across the walls and the false windows, rolling across the ground beneath her feet. The nanobots quickly spread out, breaking down the components of the room, stripping away the incredible technology that once made it secure against almost anything, the same technology that could be turned into terrifying weapons in the wrong hands.   
The Doctor made sure to stand still as the process unfolded around her. The nanobots wouldn’t affect her, but any movement could disturb their work, slowing the whole thing down. It would only take a few moments to complete, but a few moments could be a life time for a Timelord. It was more than enough time for her thoughts to wonder, though they all focused on a single idea.  
She had broken the rules of time before, or at least bent them into pretty little knots. It had sort of become a personal side habit, though one she rarely indulged in. There were countless forces that were against the idea of interfering with time, not to mention how often it seemed that time itself had a will of its own. But there were ways around it, ancient, secret and complicated ways that meant risking everything, but it was possible. If she wanted, if she dared, she could find Missy. That was the beauty of time travel, of having a new face. Missy was still out there, the version of her that was becoming her friend. Time was never linear for a time traveller, River proved that in abundance. She could find her if she wanted, and pretend to be nothing more than a face in the crowd. They might even be destined to met again through the natural progression of time, and these thoughts might just be a part of what was, what is and what will be. The possibilities were endless, and she was sorely tempted to explore them, but she knew it was a bad idea even to entertain the thoughts. Time was messy as it was, and her history with the Master was messier still. Trying to influence it, trying to force it, it could create all manners of paradoxes that could rip the universe apart. And that was the best-case scenario.   
The Doctor put her thoughts aside as the last of the deconstruction finished up. She watched as the central chamber flickered and begun folding in on itself, collapsing down ever smaller. At last, the quantum fold chamber finished reducing and returned to its dormant state, little more than a cube with runic-like green makings, little bigger than one of those human puzzle cubes with the different coloured sides. Once again the forgotten basement was just that, an old stone basement that seemed like something from a different time, now completely empty. Even the holes where the structure had dug into the deep foundations had been restored, making it exactly as it was when she had first found it, desolate and silent. And now bathed in darkness. She was thankful she had installed the lights in the antechamber a few decades back, their glow now shinning in through the gap where the big doors had once been. She crossed the small space to where the cube sat on the floor and knelt down to pick it up. Her hand reached for it, but then froze.  
What was that?  
She hadn’t seen it at first in the shadow light. It had been lying on the floor behind the cube, a familiar shaped object that had no right being here. Just looking at it caused her confusion. With a trembling had, she reached down and picked up the strange, impossible object.   
The screwdriver was light enough, but it still felt heavy in her hand.  
Turning it over, the Doctor quickly studied the device, taking in every detail. It looked almost exactly like hers, though the shell had been broken and repaired, and it sported a number of other modules that had been bolted and welded on almost haphazardly. She scanned it with her own screwdriver. The strange device was dead, its data entirely wiped, but she managed to get a list of the modules installed on it. The sonic component was exactly the one she had used in all her regenerations, but that wasn’t the one that took her attention. It was the laser component her focus was fixed on. It was the one that the Master was known to use, the one Missy had used. The Doctor shook her head. What was this? And why did it feel so familiar? She closed her eyes, trying to focus on the feeling of recognition.  
That’s when she became aware of it.  
It was like a shadow in the part of her mind that held the memories of her time in the vault. It was almost imperceptible, more like the feeling of having a word you couldn’t recall on the tip of your tongue. She probed harder, trying to force the memories to the surface, but the harder she fought the more the shadow, the blank space, seemed to slip from her grasp. It made no sense. Her memories seemed so complete. She remembered being here as her past regeneration, trying to help her friend become something more than just the monster that haunted the myths of countless worlds. Every moment was there, every second sequential and accounted for. There were no missing moments, no unexpected questions in the narrative. So why did it now feel like something was missing? No, not missing she realised, that was the wrong word. It felt like something was blocked, something that made her hearts ache for a reason she didn’t know. Her head spun with pain as she pushed even harder, but it was no good. It had to be some kind of psychic block, one that was far more intense than any she had encountered in a long time, perhaps even the most intense. There was no way around it, and nothing she could do.  
Opening her eyes, the Doctor took one last look at the dead screwdriver, then slipped it into her pocket along with the quantum fold chamber cube. She then rose to her feet and headed for the stairs, determined to find the truth of the mystery that she suddenly found herself in the middle of. Something had happened to her, something that she was never meant to find out about. That frightened her, but she couldn’t help the smile that crossed her face. As much as she was afraid, there was something else far stronger that was sitting along side it, something that she found herself clinging tightly too.  
She never thought she’d have hope for Missy again, but then again, she never imagined she would have to come back here.  
Taking the stairs two at a time, she rushed back to the TARDIS, leaving the forgotten basement in her wake without so much as a glance back, though she couldn’t shake the feeling that one day she would return to it again, one day in the future. Or maybe even the past.

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place after the first two episodes of season twelve. I decided to omit any references to the Timeless Child storyline featured in that season despite the Master having informed the Doctor about it. I just don’t like that storyline and its not important to the story I’m trying to tell with this series, but hopefully, if everything goes the way I’m hoping it to, this series should end up gelling well enough with the official canon. We’ll see.


End file.
